


Salt Your Wounds

by Beaufort



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternate Canon, Angst, Catching Fire Spoilers, Emotional Infidelity, F/M, M/M, Male Slash
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-31
Updated: 2014-01-08
Packaged: 2018-01-06 22:51:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1112457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beaufort/pseuds/Beaufort
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Let's find the distance from your heart to mine. And then take the derivative to determine the rate at which we are drifting apart. </p>
<p>First derivative: velocity. <br/>Second derivative: acceleration. </p>
<p>And it's no wonder that Peeta’s gaze, heavy with arid heat, follows Odaire. Katniss Everdeen and Finnick Odaire are, after all, two sides of the same coin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Peeta Mellark

**Author's Note:**

> Canonical divergence with alternating POVs. New to the Hunger Games fandom, so criticism and suggestions are very much welcomed! Enjoy the read~

Wedding bells ain't gonna chime

With both of us guilty of crime

And both of us sentenced to time

And now we're all alone

 

It’s been two days since Katniss figured out the clock arrangement of the arena. It’s been two days since the concept of time disappeared from their surroundings. Each hour and minute is now suspended in a state of complete limbo, with neither the light of sunrise nor the dark of midnight. The eye of a storm, a brief interlude before catastrophe. 

* * *

 

Tall, seductive Finnick Odaire knows how to maneuver his body. The aqueous roll of his hips and bold rhythmic confidence of his footsteps ensnare even the most aloof of gazes. He fights with a fluid grace that is swift and lethal, sharp clean movements embodying strength and precision.

Finnick grins with the cockiness of being keeper to the Capitol’s dirty secrets. His rare sea green irises speak of false mirth, opium nights, and mussed linens.

Peeta is not blind. No one is.

Finnick is clean throat lines, and pleasing muscle definition, steadfast movements, and razor wit. Just as Peeta knows Katniss will always long for the comfort of Gale’s woodland musk and quiet strength, he also knows that there is no immunity to Finnick’s easy charms.

Peeta doesn’t know what to think. It’s about jealousy, shame, fidelity, infidelity, wants, needs, and everything that is indefinitely silenced by fear and secrecy. He’s a husband in name, with a child that does not exist. He is, and has always been in love with Katniss Everdeen.

But he wonders if it’s because this love he has for Katniss is so heavy, selfless, and unhappy, that they both crave for a way out.

Peeta used to watch Katniss walk home every day, fingers tracing the quaint locks of her braid in the still air. He used to fantasize, for impossibility breeds courage. And in that impossible universe of his was a gingerbread house, vivid with color and warmth in a District so ashen with austerity. Katniss never saw him, but he faithfully appeared by the small window frame every afternoon.

If neither he nor Katnisss were reaped in the Hunger Games, Peeta doubt their current intimacy would still exist. This damned intimacy that is filled with imitation and distance. Katniss’ kisses are soft and perfunctory, or worse, her hands search for flogging scars that he does not have. In those stilted moments of silence, he would brush away the dirt on her cheeks, and make for the shallow beach.

He would sit a calculated distance away from Finnick, close enough to sense his general presence, but far enough that conversation never becomes a viable option. There would never be a comfortable silence for him again, not when they only dredge up unpleasant memories of surprise attacks and the morbid cries of jabberjays.

But this would come the closest- rough sand beneath the barren soles of his boots, and a tangy taste to the salty air as they overlook the waves circumventing Cornucopia.

Johanna had once taunted him about trouble in paradise. She had taken a delicious interest in pointing out the strained relationship between him and Katniss ever since the elevator incident. Most of it's teasing, revenge for the fumble of his fingers over the zipper of her unconventional dress, but some of it isn’t.

Peeta’s reaction had been a confessing silence. Afterwards, no one spoke about him and Katniss again.

And just as Peeta used to watch Katniss, he now knows that his eyes sway like a pendulum, unwittingly desirous and guilty, landing upon the sweet promise of nude skin beneath Finnick Odair’s sweat stained collar.

Johanna is surprisingly perceptive despite her seemingly brash personality. The once she caught him looking, her lips crinkled and twitched, and then she laughed like she hadn’t in years, loud, raucous, and Johanna Mason.

Holy fuck, she said. Holy fuck, baker boy.


	2. Katniss Everdeen

Katniss never has time. She is always running, hands flying through the easy motions of bow drawing. The tangible rough texture of the arrows are a comfort in of themselves. When she draws out her bones into that familiar position, adrenaline shoots up her spine, spicy and anesthetic.

In the quiet of the humid forest night, Katniss can see where the gears are becoming lodged with dirt and grease residue. She can feel the mechanisms coming apart, losing compatibility.

Attention is what they need. Care, explanations. But Katniss does not have that time because she is doing everything to insure Peeta’s survival. Haymitch had said that she could live a hundred lifetimes and not deserve him. Katniss only wants to live one lifetime, and use that lifetime to give Peeta his.

She did so for Prim, and she will again for Peeta.

Every once in a while, however, she’ll allow herself a sample of happier memories. Just when it becomes too difficult, when Cinna’s bloody prone form appears, when Prim’s shrill screams break out across the canopy. Katniss would imagine running swiftly through a safer forest, a clear target in sight, and a silent companion at her back. She would imagine the earthy woodland scent, and the way she would look back, eyes meeting-  
Eyes meeting the flushed face of Peeta.

Peeta emerges from the shadows of chest high ferns. In the dim natural light his natural blond hair looks tussled and murky from day grime. His chest rises and falls deeply with each breath. Katniss opens her mouth to ask, but Peeta moves away from her outreached arm. There’s a moment of eye contact where Katniss sees nothing but liquid darkness in his normally clear blue eyes. She is suddenly frightened by how feral and avoidant they are. As if still suspended on a wave crest, but slowly coming to a shameful awareness.

Katniss lets him go that day. Doesn’t pull him back. If Peeta wants to play these games of tag, then surely there are enough blood thirsty contenders around them to satisfy his desire.

She lets him go and doesn’t think about the fabric creases on his back. Doesn’t look at the bruising patterns on his neck. Those patches of irritated skin, flush with a recent dampness. She can well imagine shapely masculine lips closing upon the thin delicate skin above Peeta’s jugular. A pulsing angry heat thrums behind her skull, but not for the first time, Katniss presses it back with the heel of her hand. Imagines Peeta's firm flat palms as he steadily presses into the bread dough.

She doesn’t comment on the strong odor of sweat and musky arousal that wafts past her nose. She really should. It’s a filthy incriminating scent-

-that is lingering longer than it should because Peeta has stopped his footsteps at the edge of her peripheral vision. As if waiting, pleading, challenging.

But the moment passes, and it’s too late, and maybe this is the turning point, but Katniss doesn’t have the time to wrestle it back. 


End file.
